Coming home: different popes for different times.

AuthorVirden, Dick

In his first year in office Pope Francis has become a rock star who inspires hope among millions, believers and non-believers alike. Time Magazine made him Man of the Year, and other honors and accolades have come his way from all around the globe. The Argentine-born Pope's sure-footed performance--and the enthusiastic popular response he engenders--recall the early days of a recent predecessor, John Paul II, who shook the world with a pivotal return to his Polish homeland 35 years ago this June.

That historic event doesn't seem that long ago to me. I was serving then at our embassy in Warsaw and remember vividly the euphoria in Poland that week as the first Slavic pontiff awed and lifted up his countrymen with his charismatic persona and message of faith and hope. "Be not afraid," he told them, and suddenly a people beaten down by Nazi subjugation of incredible cruelty during World War II followed by more than three decades of brutal and corrupt rule imposed by Moscow were joyful and reinvigorated.

Poet Russell Lowell might well have been writing of the mood in Poland at that moment when he asked, "And what is so rare as a day in June? Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it; we are happy now, because God wills it."

Poles were clearly heartened, of course, that one of their own had been selected as the first non-Italian to lead the Roman Catholic Church in five centuries. But it was more than simple pride or patriotism. Individual citizens could now see that they had lots of company in identifying with the new pontiff and the values he stood for, not those of Moscow or communism. Many could begin to sense, too, that it was that the latter that would one day end up on the ash heap of history.

The Pope began his journey with a solemn mass in the historic main square in Warsaw, then called Victory Square and at other times Pilsudski Square, Saxon Square and Adolf Hitler Platz. At least a million people attended, some say three million; the rest of the country watched on television, some on their knees in front of their sets. (In negotiating the timing and terms of the visit, flummoxed Polish authorities had agreed to televise the Mass, probably in an effort to hold down in-person attendance. They also directed state television to aim their cameras to make it look as though the crowds were small and consisted mainly of the elderly and clergy. None of that or other efforts to contain the damage worked.)

I felt very privileged indeed to be on the scene--courtesy of the invitation and press pass I wrangled as Press Attache --and to watch John Paul II electrify the multitude. Young (just turned 59 the month before), vigorous, confident, and at home, he commanded that stage like the trained actor he was.

One of the Pope's core themes was that "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe." There could be no more direct challenge to the leaders who were then ruling his beloved country in the name of an...

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